These violences, which fame did not fail to exaggerate whilst narrating them, might give the sultan of Egypt a pretext for renewing the war; and the Christians, who plainly perceived their new perils, implored the assistance of the sovereign pontiff. The pope engaged Venice to furnish twenty-five galleys, and this fleet transported to Ptolemaïs a troop of sixteen hundred men, levied in haste in Italy. This reinforcement, which was sent to the inhabitants of Palestine for their defence, provoked their ruin; the soldiers of the Holy See, levied among adventurers and vagabonds, gave themselves up to all sorts of excesses. Having no regular pay, they plundered Christians and Mussulmans indiscriminately; at last, this undisciplined troop marched out of the city in arms, and made an incursion upon the lands of the Saracens. Everything was laid waste on their passage; towns and villages were pillaged, the inhabitants insulted, and many of them massacred. The sultan of Cairo sent ambassadors to the Christians to complain of these outrages, committed in a time of peace. On the arrival of the Mussulman envoys several councils were held in Ptolemaïs. Opinions were at first divided; some were willing to take the part of those who had broken the truce; others thought it more just and prudent to give satisfaction to the sultan, and solicit the continuation of the treaty. In the end, it was determined to send a deputation to Cairo, commissioned to make excuses and offer presents. Upon being admitted to an audience of Kelaoun, the deputation alleged that the offences had been committed by some soldiers who had come from the West, and in no case by the inhabitants of Ptolemaïs. The deputies, in the name of their city, offered to punish the authors of the disorders; but their submission and prayers produced no effect upon the sultan, who reproached them severely with making a jest of the faith of treaties, and with giving an asylum to disturbers of peace and foes to the laws of nations. He was the more inflexible, from thinking the opportunity a favourable one for carrying out his projects; he was aware that no crusade was in preparation in Europe, and he knew that all the succour from the West was reduced to this band of adventurers who had just broken the truce. Kelaoun sent back the ambassadors, threatening the city of Ptolemaïs with the whole weight of his anger: his orders were already given for preparations for war throughout all his provinces.
Immediately after the return of the ambassadors[51] a grand council was called, at which were present the patriarch of Jerusalem, John de Gresli, who commanded for the king of France, Messire Oste de Granson for the king of England, the grand masters of the Temple and the Hospital, the principal persons of the city, and a great number of citizens and pilgrims. When the deputies had rendered an account of their mission, and repeated the threats of the sultan, the patriarch addressed the assembly; his virtues, his gray hairs, his zeal for the cause of the Christians, all inspired confidence and respect. This venerable prelate exhorted all who heard him to arm themselves for the defence of the city, to remember that they were Christians, and that it was their duty to die for the cause of Christ; he conjured them to forget their discords, to have no other enemies but the Mussulmans, and to show themselves worthy of the holy cause for which they were about to fight. His eloquence awakened the generous feelings of his audience, and all swore to obey the exhortations of the patriarch: happy would it have been for the city of Ptolemaïs if its inhabitants and its defenders had preserved the same dispositions and the same enthusiasm amidst the perils and mischances of war!
They asked for succour in all quarters; a few pilgrims arrived from the West, and a few warriors from the isles of the Mediterranean: the king of Cyprus landed with five hundred men. These new auxiliaries and all who were able to bear arms in the city, amounted to nine hundred horsemen and ten thousand foot soldiers. They were divided into four bodies, charged with the defence of the towers and the ramparts. The first of these divisions was under the command of Oste de Granson and John de Gresli, the one with the English and the Picards, the other with the French; the second division was commanded by the king of Cyprus, in conjunction with the grand master of the Teutonic order; the third by the grand master of St. John, and the grand master of the knights of Canterbury; the fourth by the grand masters of the Temple and of St. Lazarus: a council of eight leaders was to govern the city during the siege.
The Mussulmans were preparing for the war in all quarters; everything was in motion from the banks of the Nile to those of the Euphrates. The sultan Kelaoun having fallen sick on leaving Cairo, sent before him seven principal emirs, each having four thousand horse and twenty thousand foot under his command. On their arrival upon the territories of Ptolemaïs, gardens, country-houses, the vines which covered the hills—everything was destroyed. The sight of the conflagration which arose on all sides, the distracted crowd of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, who fled from their homes, with their goods, their flocks, and their families, warned Ptolemaïs of the execution of the threats and the sinister projects of the Saracens: there were several battles fought on the plain, but nothing remarkable or decisive; the Mussulmans waited the arrival of the sultan to commence the labours of the siege.
In the meanwhile, Kelaoun was still detained in Egypt by sickness, and feeling his end approach, the sultan sent for his son and his principal emirs; he recommended to the latter, to serve his son as they had served himself; and to the former, to follow up the war against the Christians without any intermission, conjuring him not to grant his remains the honour of sepulture before he had conquered the city of Ptolemaïs. Chalil swore to accomplish the last wishes of his father; and when Kelaoun had closed his eyes, the ulemas and the imauns assembled in the chapel in which his remains were deposited, and read during the whole night verses from the Koran, never ceasing to invoke their prophet against the disciples of Christ. Chalil did not delay setting forward on his march with his army. The Franks hoped that the death of Kelaoun would give birth to some disorders among the Mamelukes; but hatred for the Christians was a sufficient bond of union for the Mussulman soldiers; the siege even of Ptolemaïs, the hope of annihilating a Christian city, stifled all the germs of discord, and consolidated the power of Chalil, whom they proclaimed beforehand the conqueror of the Franks, and the pacificator of the Mussulman religion.
The sultan arrived before Ptolemaïs; his army covering a space of several leagues, from the sea to the mountains. More than three hundred machines of war were ready to batter the ramparts of the city. Aboulfeda, who was present at this siege, speaks of one of these machines which a hundred chariots were scarcely sufficient to transport.
This formidable preparation spread consternation among the inhabitants of Ptolemaïs. The grand master of the templars, despairing of the defence or of the salvation of the city, assembled the leaders to consult if there were any means of renewing the truce, and thus escaping inevitable ruin.[52] Repairing to the tent of the sultan, he demanded peace of him; and seeking to produce an effect upon his mind, he exaggerated the strength of Ptolemaïs; the sultan, dreading doubtless the difficulties of the siege, and hoping to find another opportunity of making himself master of the city, consented to a truce upon condition that every inhabitant should pay him a Venetian denier. The grand master on his return convoked an assembly of the people in the church of the Holy Cross, and laid before them the conditions the sultan placed upon the conclusion of a fresh truce. His advice was, that they should comply with these conditions, provided there were no other means of saving Ptolemaïs. Scarcely had he expressed his opinion, when the multitude rushed in in fury, uttering loud cries of treachery! and very nearly did the grand master expiate on the spot his foresight and zeal for the salvation of the city. From that time the only thought of this generous warrior was to die arms in hand for an ungrateful and frivolous people, incapable of repelling war by war, and not enduring to be saved by peace.
The presence of the sultan had redoubled the ardour of the Mussulman troops. From the day of his arrival the siege was prosecuted with incredible vigour. The army of the besiegers amounted to sixty thousand horse and a hundred and forty thousand foot, who constantly relieved each other, and left the besieged not a moment of repose. The machines hurled stones and enormous pieces of wood, the fall of which shook the palaces and houses of the city to their foundation. A shower of arrows, darts, fire-pots, and leaden balls was poured night and day upon the ramparts and towers. In the first assaults, the Christians killed a great number of the infidels who approached the walls with arrows and stones; they made many sorties, in one of which they penetrated to the tents of the Saracens. Being at length repulsed, some of them fell into the hands of the Mussulmans, and the Syrian horsemen, who had fastened the heads of the vanquished to the necks of their horses, went to display before the sultan of Cairo the barbarous trophies of a dearly-bought victory.
Danger at first united all the inhabitants of Ptolemaïs, and animated them with the same sentiments. In the early combats nothing could equal their ardour; they were sustained by the expectation of receiving succours from the West, and they hoped, also, that some advantages gained over the Saracens would force the besiegers to retreat; but in proportion as these hopes vanished, their zeal diminished; most of them were incapable of supporting lengthened fatigue; the sight of a peril which unceasingly returned exhausted their courage; the defenders of the ramparts perceived that their numbers were lessened daily; the port was covered with Christians departing from the city, and bearing their treasures with them. The example of those who thus fled completed the discouragement of those who remained; and in a city which numbered a hundred thousand inhabitants, and which, at the commencement of the siege, had furnished nearly twenty thousand warriors, only twelve thousand could at length be mustered under arms.
To desertion, another evil was soon added, which was dissension among the leaders; several of them disapproved of the measures that were adopted for the defence of the city, and because their opinions did not prevail in the council, they remained inactive, forgetful of the perils and evils which threatened both the city and themselves.